Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Work to Be Done

      “Allow yourself the opportunity to get uncomfortable.” — Alex Toussaint

      When we move into uncomfortable situations, we are making a choice to move away from our old identity into something decidedly new. That in and of itself is daunting. Throw in some well-meaning friends trying to gently pull you back to who you once were and it moves up to challenging. But stay the course and something switches within. It all becomes easier. Our identity has changed from someone who prefers the comfortably familiar to someone who stretches their limitations.

      Living in a constant state of getting uncomfortable requires a productive mindset. There is work to be done, we tell ourselves, because we aren’t done yet. One area of life blends with another, and another, and soon we’re finding we aren’t dwelling on excuses anymore, we’re just doing what needs to be done to make progress towards the higher standard we’ve set for ourselves. This applies to work, our health and fitness, our relationships with others, to what we read or the information we otherwise consume, and sure—to what we write. We haven’t reached personal excellence yet, but we’ve lived to fight another day. So fight for it.

      If progress is the goal, whatever the pursuit, then comfort is the enemy. We simply cannot progress when we’re holding tight to what was already comfortable for us. To climb away from that scenic vista into the unknown may make us question our sanity at times. What is sanity but behaving in a normal and rational way? Who decides what is normal or rational? The people who want things to stay just the way things have always been. What a sad, boring existence that would be. Identity is a foundation, not our final destination. Keep moving—there’s work to be done.

    • The Passage

      “Our doubts are traitors,
      and make us lose the good we oft might win,
      by fearing to attempt.”
      ― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

      Something changes in us when we resolve to do something. A switch flips somewhere within our body and soul, and our very identity has changed well before the actual work is done that we’ve decided to do to bridge the gap. The attempt becomes obvious as the logical steps between here and there. Doubt defers to a rigid focus on outcomes. Determination enters the fray.

      All of this leads us to make a passage. Like a sailboat crossing an ocean, we are on a journey ourselves, from where we were to where we’re going. This passage is fraught with a potential dangers in the form of well-meaning friends and family, work obligations, and the most insipid of dangers, comfortable habits and beliefs about who we are that must be overcome to complete the transformation. We’ll need all of that rigid focus and determination to make it through.

      The thing to remember about a passage is that it’s not one step. It’s a labyrinth, and we aren’t meant to see the other side. We’re only to take this next step. Days will fly by as they always have, but we are moving through them differently than we used to. The passage changes us in ways we don’t see until one day we realize the gap has shrunken before us. We may then honor the changes by simply taking the next step ahead.

    • Practicing Significance

      “No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine.” ― David Whyte

      To be progressing in one part of our lives is meaningful, but incomplete if we aren’t also making strides in the rest of our lives. Balance, as they say, is the key. Progress in fitness and nutrition bodes well, but we can’t ignore our intellectual development while we hone our body into shape. We cannot be a champion of personal excellence if we aren’t reaching beyond ourselves to help others reach theirs, for we are all in this together, even when we sometimes wish to simply go it alone. Some aspire to make a dent in the universe, some aspire to write their own verse. Each is a way to make our brief time dancing with life more meaningful and lasting (in the form of a legacy of contribution).

      There’s no denying that a career is a large and meaningful part of life. If I’ve had any success in business it was built on listening to the needs of others and finding answers. People want to feel they’re being listened to. The world is simply looking for someone to get back to them. We reach out to others, expect an answer or at the very least a timely response, and hope for resolution to whatever started the transaction. Those who follow through are quietly powerful agents of trust and belief. We learn who can be relied upon and follow them throughout their careers. That network of trusted alliances is the foundation, not just of a strong career but a life of significance.

      Each day is an opportunity for connection. Checking in with people just to see how they’re doing, working to solve problems that arise, lending an ear when it’s all that someone needed in that moment—these are how we maintain lifetime bonds with our fellow time travelers. Achievement looks nice on a resume but is shallow on its own. Significance has deeper roots, and allows for growth beyond the individual.

      What do we practice in our daily lives? Looking beyond ourselves is the path to significance and purpose. This may seem out of touch with the current vibe in the world, but what will we remember in the end of our time on earth? How will we be remembered by those who survive us?

    • Creating Outcomes

      “There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.” — Harry S. Truman

      The funny thing about taking action is that it often leads to more opportunities to act. We become action-oriented, and notice opportunities to act more often than someone who is sedentary and usually looking for opportunities to rest. Ultimately we go in the direction we set our compass to, seeing what we see while creating outcomes that lead to even more outcomes.

      That term, creating outcomes, is high agency stuff. It’s an action-oriented approach to living that suits us. We all know that we’re here for a short time (memento mori). If you read this blog with any regularity you’ve certainly heard me mention that with some frequency. This is not a death-focused mindset, it’s life-focused. Awareness leads to action. We only have so much time—don’t dare waste a moment of it!

      What is an outcome but a destination separated from us by a gap we close? We see the target, determine the action necessary to reach it, and do the work to bridge our here with our potential there. Having reached an outcome, we naturally look towards the next interesting destination, and so on. This is a growth mindset, and it’s a world apart from believing we have no control over our lives. Decide what to be and go be it.

      All that said, I see even as I’m actively bridging gaps that there are other gaps yet to bridge. The only thing to do is figure out how to create those outcomes too, then get after it with urgency. For the clock is ticking and time flies (tempus fugit) and we’re deep into our one precious life, so what are we waiting for?

    • Advancing

      “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing towards what will be.” — Khalil Gibran

      Earlier this month I began a challenge to myself. I do this every summer in some form or another, but this one felt different. More urgency to get fit again, but also a more compelling reason to stay at it. And I’ve seen progress, even as I’ve been impatient for even more. The scale indicates I’m on the right track. The three books I’m rotating through will all be completed if I stay with them. The weight circuits indicate improved strength and aerobic fitness. All signs point to improvement, and yet I want more. We humans are never satisfied, are we?

      There’s a subtle difference between enhancing and advancing. In the former we are merely tweaking our comfort level to make a slight change. It’s like turning up the volume on the television—we’re making a change, but we’re still just sitting on the couch watching television. Advancing is a different story. It’s turning off that television and walking out of an old identity towards a new one.

      Slow progress is still progress. When we get wrapped up in how big the increments are, we lose sight of the destination we’re heading towards and begin to doubt the process for getting there. The journey is always the point anyway. The arrival at a goal is certainly something to celebrate, but it also closes a chapter of becoming. We became who we set out to be. We may savor it, but them move on to the next, for life is motion.

      How do we measure motion? By progress. Where did we begin and where are we now? Where are we now and where are we going to? Who we are now is simply an image in a reel of images on the motion picture of our life. We forget sometimes that we are not a still life, but a life in motion. One moment leads to the next and the next thereafter. We may choose to make those images dance and build a life of consequence. Focus on the advance, the increments will sort themselves out.

    • The Incremental and the Impatient

      “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      Incremental progress is still progress. It may lack the excitement of an audacious leap forward, but there’s no denying that we’re going in the right direction, albeit slowly. Sometimes so slowly that it feels like we’ve reached a plateau. It can be a frustratingly slow transformation, when we dove into the change specifically for the change it promised to bring, and that’s why people drop resolutions almost immediately after they’ve embarked on them. We want instant gratification in this world. Like the spoiled rich kid in the Willie Wonka movie. But we know what happened to her.

      Incremental growth is the stuff of long term investment strategies and lifetime fitness. Bold leaps are inherently full of risk and reward calculations that don’t fit into important considerations like our health and financial well-being. Mothers and spouses and financial advisors tend to favor incremental, so they aren’t worries about their reckless loved ones. Being inclined towards reckless leaps now and then, I appreciate the steady focus my better half brings to the table.

      It comes down to impatience. When we are incrementally-minded, we develop the patience to let things play out until the transformation happens. When we are impatient, we change course the moment things aren’t going the way we expected them to go. Momentum dies when we’re constantly changing direction. By staying the course we learn the value of that steadiness over time. Patience is thus the virtue we were always told it was but didn’t believe until we saw it for ourselves.

      There’s value in both patience and impatience in our lives, and we ought to learn when to apply each to optimize our results. Bringing together a series of small steps completed can result in something beautiful in the end. One workout, one more day of paying ourselves first, one more page read, one more blog post, and one small brush stroke at a time accumulates into something, and that something then builds upon itself. Even when it feels like nothing is moving in the moment, momentum is established.

    • Some Palpable Pursuit

      Jack London drinking his life away while
      writing of strange and heroic men.
      Eugene O’Neil drinking himself oblivious
      while writing his dark and poetic
      works.

      now our moderns
      lecture at universities
      in tie and suit,
      the little boys soberly studious
      the little girls with glazed eyes
      looking
      up,
      the lawns so green, the books so dull,
      the life so dying of
      thirst.
      —Charles Bukowski, the replacements

      Do interesting things. There’s no other way to quench a thirst for living. Do something interesting today that you hadn’t even considered when you woke up this morning. Leap into the unknown and see where it takes you.

      I haven’t had a drink in 16 days. Not for any reason but deciding that this was a good time to try something different. To abstain from something isn’t anything more than a decision acted upon. Decide what to be and go be it. I’ll likely have a drink again someday, because that habit doesn’t rule my life, it simply spritzes it with effervescence. It turns out ice water is a decent spritz in the moment. We learn as we grow into new experiences. To challenge everything we believe is necessary is to open our minds to new possibilities.

      Honestly, I get like this sometimes, where I’ll simply stop doing something just to see how it feels to not do it anymore. And replace it with something else. A year ago I was cycling like mad trying to meet one challenge I’d set for myself. This year the goal isn’t distance but duration. To simply turn my days upside down from what they were a couple of weeks ago. The healthier character I’m becoming is a nice side benefit, if still incomplete. Naturally, there’s still work to be done. And isn’t character development a joyful pursuit?

      Changes become habits, and habits become identity. Don’t like your identity? Change your habits. Life doesn’t have to be a tedious march to the end, and it doesn’t have to be a drunken stumble awash in distraction from the inevitable. We may choose to be alive and engaged in some palpable pursuit. Mine isn’t to stop drinking, and it’s not to exercise more, though both are occurring in the same timeframe. Mine is to quench a thirst for new experiences and to see who emerges on the other side. And sure, to reflect on it in words formed of this emerging identity.

    • Wrestling Back a Life

      And, I know a woman
      Became a wife
      These are the very words she uses to describe her life
      She said, “A good day
      Ain’t got no rain”
      She said, “A bad day’s when I lie in bed
      And think of things that might have been
      — Paul Simon, Slip Slidin’ Away

      When we get busy with life—the kind of busy that compresses each day into small wins amongst the incremental progress, we feel the time slipping away. Time moves the same, we just fill it differently. Put a lot into it and it flies along quite rapidly. Leave it empty and purposeless and it seems to drag on forever. There’s some balance to be found there somewhere.

      Lately, my own days are filled to the brim. I wanted this for myself, I repeatedly say each day when I put my feet on the floor and stand for another go at life. Fill the day; keep regret at bay. We must wrestle back a life of purpose from the chaos of the world that would steal our time and distract us from the beautiful work yet to be done.

      We owe it to ourselves to live a life of awareness, and with that clarity reach for a higher standard for ourselves in the things that mean the most for us. Arete, or personal excellence, will be forever just out of reach, and yet we may get closer with each day filled with purposeful action. The time will slip and slide away in any case, but we may mitigate the might have beens.

    • We Choose to Become

      “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
      — Carl Jung

      Recently far more active than I was just a couple of weeks ago, I’ve become reacquainted with lactic acid and the aches and pains of shrugging off lethargy once again. A small price to pay today for a healthier tomorrow. The idiom “pay me now or pay me later” is always in play in every decision. Paying as we go will always net a better result for those building a better future.

      We change when we decide it’s time, or when change is forced upon us (which is usually too late in the game). We have agency, we must choose to use it. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes. If that’s not high agency, I’m not sure what is. First, decide, then go be that which we’ve decided to be. There is no magic formula hiding behind the curtain. We were the wizard all along.

      The thing is, when we keep a promise to ourselves, we learn to trust ourselves more when the next audacious idea comes into our heads. We made it this far, why not try for that next BHAG (“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”) that Jim Collins points to as the fuel behind reaching for long term objectives with urgency and purpose. Is getting back in shape audacious? Not really, but closing that gap makes us more inclined to close another, then another still. And thus to reach higher than we might have otherwise.

      We choose to become or we concede our agency to others. Have another drink, have the fries with that burger, don’t wrestle with that homework, don’t make that call that would make all the difference… we know where these broken promises took us. So why keep breaking more? What’s happened in the past brought us here. What we choose to do now will determine who we will become next. Why leave that to fate? Go be something more.

    • Tomato Days

      These are the early days of summer, even if it feels like it hasn’t started in the northeast United States, where I live. And June is the beginning of tomato days. I grow them as much for the smell of the vines as for the fruit I may or may not harvest, depending on the tomato-loving wildlife and the fickle weather. What I grow we’ll eat, and what I can’t grow I’ll pick up at the local farm stand. Tomato days are the very best days of summer.

      Lately I’ve introduced more tomatoes into my daily routine no matter the season. My PSA score was higher than it should be, not dangerous levels but still make some changes in your life levels. It seems that the abundant levels of lycopene in tomatoes is an excellent way to help protect cells in the body from damage caused by free radicals. Lycopene is an antioxidant ally in a world full of bad stuff trying to mess with our happy lives. So eating tomatoes every day is an easy and logical way to increase our health span.

      And health span is everything! If we hope to have a long and active life, versus a life tempered by assisted living and lowered expectations about what is possible in a day, we must build and maintain a healthy and fit body that can help kick atrophy and disease down the curb. Exercise and good nutrition are building blocks for a better future, while helping us feel more energized and focused today. So have a tomato. Just save some for me.